M. d'Ainsi a friend to France, and attach him to my brother's
interest. Through God's assistance I succeeded with him, and so
much was M. d'Ainsi pleased with my conversation that he came to
the resolution of soliciting the Bishop, his master, to grant him
leave to accompany me as far as Namur, where Don John of Austria
was in waiting to receive me, observing that he had a great desire
to witness so splendid an interview. This _Spanish_ Fleming,
the Bishop, had the weakness to grant M. d'Ainsi's request, who
continued following in my train for ten or twelve days. During
this time he took every opportunity of discoursing with me, and
showed that, in his heart, he was well disposed to embrace the
service of France, wishing no better master than the Prince my
brother, and declaring that he heartily despised being under the
command of his Bishop, who, though his sovereign, was not his
superior by birth, being born a private gentleman like himself,
and, in every other respect, greatly his inferior.

Leaving Cambray, I set out to sleep at Valenciennes, the chief
city of a part of Flanders called by the same name. Where this
country is divided from Cambrésis (as far as which I was conducted
by the Bishop of Cambray), the Comte de Lalain, M. de Montigny
his brother, and a number of gentlemen, to the amount of two
or three hundred, came to meet me.

Valenciennes is a town inferior to Cambray in point of strength,
but equal to it for the beauty of its squares, and churches,--the
former ornamented with fountains, as the latter are with curious
clocks. The ingenuity of the Germans in the construction of their
clocks was a matter of great surprise to all my attendants, few
amongst whom had ever before seen clocks exhibiting a number